A Huge Kiss From God!

When we began to plan for our trip to China, we were originally going to spend the weekend in Beijing before receiving our daughter. I thought, how can you go to China and NOT see the Great Wall?! Well, plans changed, and we are not going to see the Wall. Instead, we decided that we would try to go spend some time exploring Danielle's birthplace. This did pose a slight problem - we would need to find a guide who would be willing to go with us. We weren't too worried about finding a guide for a day trip, but we really wanted to spend a few days there so that we could truly experience Laibin City. Well God is good!! We found out Sunday morning that Steve's step-sister would be able to go with us!! Meg is living in Harbin, China and is fluent in Mandarin! She has a PhD in political science at Harvard, and her dissertation is on urban reform and municipal politics. She is in China this year conducting three case studies of three cities in the Northeast, the former industrial area of China that has had a more difficult time during the reform period (since 1978). In more simple terms she studies social science or sociology to general people in China. Meg is an expert at going into unfamiliar cities and learning everything that there is to know about that city in a very short time!! Who could be a better guide?! An expert AND family! She has already helped us out a ton by translating a letter for Danielle's foster family! Currently, Meg is researching what hotels we can stay at, what sights we need to see, etc. We are so excited to be able to spend time in Laibin - we are planning on taking lots and lots of pictures and videos to share with Danielle (as well as buy local arts and crafts). We are very grateful that Meg is so eager to go with us and we are grateful for all of her help. She will also get to spend a couple of days with us after we receive Danielle. So as you can see, we could not have planned this any better ourselves - only God could have orchestrated such a perfect scenario!! Thank you, God!!